1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming system configured to execute RIP (Raster Image Processor) processing for print data not subjected to the RIP processing so as to produce image data and to form an image based on the image data, and further relates to a control method for the image forming system. In this specification, “processing by a raster image processor” is simply referred to as “RIP processing”.
2. Description of Related Art
A tandem image forming system includes a plurality of image forming apparatuses which are coupled in tandem.
In such a tandem image forming system, an image is formed on some region on an image recording sheet by an image forming apparatus, successively, the image recording sheet is input to another image forming apparatus, and another image is formed on another region of the image recording sheet by the another image forming apparatus.
According to this image forming system, by two image forming apparatuses, images are formed on an obverse surface and reverse surface of a recording sheet, whereby images can be output at high speed.
Further, two image forming apparatuses may be controlled to form images separately with respective different color toners, whereby high-definition images can be formed. Furthermore, two image forming apparatuses may be differently assigned to either one of a character region and an image region so as to form an appropriate image, whereby high-definition images can be formed.
In an image forming system having a plurality of image forming apparatuses, in order to produce image data by processing print data described with a page description language by a RIP, a CPU in an image forming apparatus can execute the RIP processing without installation of a device exclusively used for the RIP processing.
With regard to a technique to execute the RIP processing in an image forming system having a plurality of image forming apparatuses, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2009-198409 proposes such a technique.
In a tandem image forming system having two image forming apparatuses, if each of the two image forming apparatuses executes the RIP processing, problems arise in that images formed by the two image forming apparatuses do not become uniform. Accordingly, in the technique disclosed by the above patent publication, the RIP processing is executed by only one of the two image forming apparatuses.